Rocket Lab launches a commercial radar-imaging satellite in dramatic night liftoff 

Liftoff of the "Owl Night Long" mission took place at 11:03 a.m. ET March 12.

Rocket Lab's Electron rocket lifts off on March 12, 2024. (Image credit: Rocket Lab)

Rocket Lab launched a commercial radar-imaging satellite today (March 12) to continue building out a constellation.

An Electron rocket topped with one of Japanese company Synspective's Strix-3 satellites lifted off from Rocket Lab's New Zealand launch site. The launch took place at 11:03 a.m. EDT (1503 GMT; 4:03 a.m. local New Zealand time on March 13), 40 minutes into a previously advertised one-hour launch window.

"It's on its way to space," a Rocket Lab official said during a live broadcast on YouTube. Following the successful first-stage separation, the broadcaster called out, "Done, done and done."

Rocket Lab's broadcast also announced the deployment of the satellite from a "kick stage" roughly one hour after launch, at 12 p.m. EDT (1600 GMT; 5 a.m. local New Zealand time on March 13.)

Rocket Lab calls Tuesday's mission "Owl Night Long" in a nod to Synspective's Strix family of synthetic-aperture radar (SAR) satellites, which shares its name with a genus of owls.

The Strix spacecraft "can image millimeter-level changes to the Earth's surface from space, independent of weather conditions at any time day or night," Rocket Lab wrote in an "Owl Night Long" mission description, which you can find here.

"Owl Night Long" was Rocket Lab's fourth launch for Synspective. The other three missions for the Earth-imaging company launched in December 2020, February 2022 and September 2022.